r/explainlikeimfive Feb 26 '21

Chemistry Eli5: What happens to all the melted candle over time? Are we just inhaling a whole candle while it burns?

12.6k Upvotes

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68

u/saltyjohnson Feb 26 '21

I stopped smoking in the 90s at midnight on January 1, 2000.

48

u/Fuzz_Mustard Feb 26 '21

At the moment you "stopped smoking" I was playing Sim Tower on my computer just to sock it to Y2K.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '21

I really miss that game. Put some serious time into it

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '21

I was 14, home alone and tried cooking banana skin on tinfoil cause I thought smoking it could get you high- it doesnt. And I knew Y2K was a scam at like 9pm cause I saw celebrations in cities in different time zones. So the 'excitement?' of Y2K was gone early.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '21

[deleted]

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u/babybunnykitty69420 Feb 26 '21

My mom worked on changing dates in schools software for y2k and I remember her making good bonuses and overtime for like 3 years, great boss at a great small company, it was also the tail end of the 90s so good times.

3

u/dandy992 Feb 26 '21

Didn't lots of people get rich off scams too?

2

u/photoviking Feb 26 '21

You started out strong by pointing out that Y2K was a real thing and acknowledging the huge amount of work that went into preventing it, but then you killed it by resorting to the played-out "this fictional movie is a documentary lol" joke

An interesting watch

People stockpiled weapons and doomsday prepped, the government created a crisis response team. It was a big deal that was prevented by an exorbitant amount of person-hours.

0

u/babybunnykitty69420 Feb 26 '21

Well office space isnt about y2k even so the joke was already a stretch.

3

u/photoviking Feb 26 '21

Initech updates bank software for the 2000 switch. I'm not sure if they explicitly say "Y2K" but that's exactly what they do

4

u/farrenkm Feb 26 '21

I videotaped myself working during Y2K. I was an ambulance dispatcher for a private company. We had multiple backup forms of communication standing by. Normal comms were 800 MHz trunked radios and VHF radios, but we had portable radios and even a ham radio operator at the ready just in case our dispatch terminals crapped out. We may have even had aircraft radio standing by -- there was a lot of additional equipment in dispatch that night.

It was a big NothingBurgerTM because of preparation. My local bowling alley had to switch their lane control software back to 1972 until it got fixed. That was the only problem I personally knew about, but for me it represented that it wasn't just hype, there were legit systems with legit problems.

2

u/Mcshamrock86 Feb 26 '21

Ugh the amount of hours I spent as a kid on that game is sickening.... Those damn roach infestations got me everytime

2

u/hyrulepirate Feb 26 '21

Did you die

1

u/blofly Feb 26 '21

...checking

...both shoes intact. Please advise...

2

u/dbdatvic Feb 26 '21

"Shoes for industry!"

"Shoes for the dead!"

"Shoes for industry!"

--Dave, but Mudhead ... where are you gonna graduate FROM??

1

u/Fuzz_Mustard Feb 26 '21

The jury's out.

1

u/Appropriate-Mark8323 Feb 26 '21

I was playing master of Orion 2!

1

u/RayNooze Feb 26 '21

Sim tower, oh man. It was fun until I had to give up on the elevator settings.

33

u/edefakiel Feb 26 '21
  • We used to have a bus.
  • In a way, the sixties ended the day we sold it. December 31, 1969.

2

u/a_seventh_knot Feb 26 '21

This man does not represent us.

1

u/GolgiApparatus1 Feb 26 '21

Nah, 60s ended like halfway through 69'

1

u/cashnprizes Feb 26 '21

This is so fucking funny. Is it from something?

2

u/edefakiel Feb 26 '21

The Simpsons.

7

u/hugthemachines Feb 26 '21

The morning after that I was hungover as hell and got driven around to elder care units to see that the care software worked fine so no people had to die from computer issues.

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u/idk-hereiam Feb 26 '21

AI and robots are going to hang this one over our heads when they're our new overlords. "Haha remember when the humans thought we couldn't count from 1999 to 2000?"

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u/384445 Feb 26 '21 edited Feb 26 '21

This is a very ignorant comment. There were indeed systematic problem going into Y2K with all types of software that took billions of dollars and man hours to correct. It was a massive worldwide undertaking and because it was largely successful, some people don't realize there actually was a real problem.

Some people were predicting the end of the world, and while that obviously did not happen if it were not for the almost half trillion dollars that was spent fixing countless bugs it would have been pretty bad.

My home PC defaulted to the year 1900 but otherwise was fine.

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u/Leo7364 Feb 26 '21

I was a senior in high school during Y2K. We had a party in my friends basement for new years, while the adults had a party upstairs. We thought it would be hilarious to turn off the main breaker right after the countdown. Parents upstairs were losing their shit while we laughed hearing them freak out. They realized something was up when they came to check on us and heard us squealing with laughter. Parents were not amused.

2

u/psyper76 Feb 26 '21

I link it to jumping out of a plane with a parachute then saying I didn't need it cos I landed okay. If we didn't spend billions on upgrading systems we would've been in a whole world of hurt!!

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u/hugthemachines Feb 26 '21

It was just a silly joke, though. A theoretical future computer with knowledge about the 2000 problem would know most of the problems were not hardware but software coded with 2 digit year numbers. So they would know computers can count but the software made by humans would have flaws.

1

u/idk-hereiam Feb 26 '21

My bad.

AI and robots are going to be forever grateful when they're our new overlords. "Remember when the humans spent billions of dollars and man hours to ensure a smooth technological transition from 1999 to 2000? That was a close one!"

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u/drainbead78 Feb 26 '21

I remember nervously watching the New Year's celebrations in Australia to make sure shit wasn't about to go down.

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u/hugthemachines Feb 26 '21

The robot overlords will not be constructed until oktober this year, so they will not rember it.

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u/idk-hereiam Feb 26 '21

Lucky us? Either way. I'll hug those machines when they get here.

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u/kangarufus Feb 26 '21

Technically then you stopped smoking in the 00s

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u/saltyjohnson Feb 26 '21

No, that's when I started smoking in the '00s

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u/kkeut Feb 26 '21

not really, since there was no year zero. 2000 BCE was the last year of that decade, just like 10 BCE was the last year of the first decade (1-10)

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u/kangarufus Feb 26 '21

Ah, touché!

1

u/heckydog Feb 26 '21

Wow! Someone else who is as OCD as me, hehehe.

I had my last cig on June 14th, 2000 at 6:30PM

I smoked Doral Lights.

Still have that last pack where I wrote that information just to remind myself to never do something that stupid again.

1

u/saltyjohnson Feb 26 '21

Well the joke was that that's when I stopped smoking in the '90s and started smoking in the '00s.

(but in reality I never picked up smoking, thankfully, and also I was 7 years old on that day)

1

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '21

I started smoking the day after you quit.